Snow at Raccoon Creek: photography by Noelle

Snow on spring blossoms and turns the sky in shades of gray. The yellows and greens are gone today while slate and shake burrow beneath thick robes of white. Silence fills the afternoon where birds had been singing only yesterday. No mowers out for lawns and the garden gloves are in their buckets. Huddled in the house the quiet pulls up last year’s losses and leaves them in the compost for the flower beds yet to be turned. It should be a sadness that tugs in the silence, as my heart was hungry for the trail. Instead, in blankets of tartan red I absorb a last winter’s charm. In the dark afternoon blooms my peace.